Category Archives: Life reflections

Book Trails

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You know those “where’s George” dollar bills in circulation? And the “book crossing” books released in airports and waiting rooms, with a stamp inside to show where it’s been?

Well, book trails are similar. Book trails are the marginalia, the inside cover notes, and the other writings of humans on the artifacts of gathered wisdom, left like messages in a book bottle for us to find.

Jack and I had several boxes of donated books come in from a family clearing out an old house. Think pre-WWII textbooks and reading club hardbacks from the 1960s. We regard such donations with mixed emotions, as 95 percent will be junk. BUT there will be some cool things in there – and there might even be one or two books we can actually sell.

This time, two books caught my attention. One was a 1942 Home Economics Text. In its sturdy green (grubby) linen jacket, The Book of Home Economics by Mary Learning (poor woman; her name was her destiny) stood out from the rest because of a coda inked on its cover.

Printed in such excellent penmanship that at first it looked like a continuation of the title, were the words “In Case of Fire, Please Throw In.”

Ah, anonymous fed-up student of the 1940s, we feel your pain. And we’re glad you found a way to fight back that left us howling with sudden laughter, seventy years later. I hope your grandchildren know what a hoot you were in school.

The other book was a bit more… poignant. Stolen Lives by Elissa Wall and Lisa Pulitzer was published in 2009 and is still selling briskly. It’s about young brides forced into polygamous marriages. This one was hardcover, had lost its dust jacket, and was seriously beat up.

But inside the cover, written in a large scrawl, I found: “Josh does not think I should be with Aaron. He thinks I am too good for Aaron but he doesn’t understand that Aaron is too good for me. He thinks everyone likes the people who like them. But we like who we like. I wish I didn’t like Aaron. Aaron doesn’t like me.”

I wish I could think of a better expression of empathy than “Ah, shit, kid.”

It reminds me of Dodie Smith’s wonderful book I Capture the Castle, wherein the young protagonist describes love as a game of Pass the Parcel gone horribly wrong. Everyone is in love with someone who’s in love with someone else.

Book trails: markers on our individual journeys, reminding us that many have trod similar paths–toward love, toward life, toward families, toward death.

It never hurts to look up from a book now and again, and smile at the people around you. We’re making our solo journeys together.

Book Zodiac

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For those who want to find their soulmate on the same page, here is my Book Zodiac list, based on a lifetime of observing readers:

1) MYSTERICUS – You like your mysteries intense. No Pattersons, but you’ll take a Kellerman now and again. You have been known at parties to break into Dashiell Hammett-speak after a couple of drinks. Compatible with Humorouses, under no circumstances should you date a Cozymyst.

2) COZYMYST – When you say you love mysteries, you mean Tamar Myers and Diane Mott Davidson. You think Janet Evanovich hung the moon, and your house is full of candles, soap, beadwork and braided rag rugs you’ve made “just like the one ” in the latest mystery you read. You have an entire attic full of bookshelves holding color-coded-by-spine cozy mysteries, because you never know when you’ll need the patterns in them again. Your family lives in terror of your handmade Christmas presents. You will get along well with anyone from Humorous and, oddly enough, the Faulkneresque signs.

3) HUMOROUS – The most versatile of the signs, you love to read funny stuff. Crossing genres and streets, you go out of your way to help others, to be the laugh of the party. You can recite “Who’s on First” in three languages, and you light candles on Dave Barry’s birthday. You and your sign siblings might be the only people left alive in America who still read Bennett Cerf. Although everyone gets along well with you, you really need a Cormacite or a Polisigher to round out your life. Make friends with Scifighters, but DON’T marry one!

4) FAULKNERESQUE – Do not date a Fauxfaulk; it will end in disaster. You read the classics list for your older sister’s Advanced Placement Literature class when you were ten. By the time you entered college, you had to major in business studies because the English classes were too dull; you could have taught them. You carry War and Peace around on subways in a real hardback, and your family doesn’t shop for your birthday anymore; they just give you the next leather-bound Harvard Classics volume in the series. When you get duplicates, you donate them at Goodwill. Marry a Scifighter; it might not seem like a natural fit, but you two need each other.

5) CORMACITE – If it’s dark, you like it. The Road, On the Beach, 1984…. you devoured them. Malcolm Muggeridge’s Winter in Moscow is your favorite book, and while you will read non-fiction, you really, really want to live in a world created by Allen Drury or Dean Ing. A  downer at parties, you are the only sign that doesn’t get along with Humoruses; you mistrust cheerful people because they don’t understand we’re all doomed. Although you hung around with the Scifighters in high school, it’s time to grow up now and marry a nice Rosepetalist. She’ll make you happy–and you’ll like it!

6) POLISIGHER – You should not marry or be friends with Cormacites; you can’t take them seriously. Polisighers devour conspiracy theory books, read the latest Ann Coulter or Michael Moore (depending on their leanings) religiously, and believe that the world is going to hell in a non-fiction handbasket. Boring on the surface, Polisighers are surprisingly good conversationalists when offered food; you can forge strong and lasting alliances with Cozymysts for just this reason. Histbuffs should be avoided; you know too much about each other.

7) FAUXFAULK – You are the person who rushes out to buy Great Gatsby and Atlas Shrugged–the day after you see the movie. You LOVE to talk about the intellectual underpinnings and societal messages that the hoi polloi are too dumb to get, which you can explain, in great detail, at dinner parties. Which is why you get invited to so few of them. Do yourself a favor; marry a nice Rosepetalist and raise kids who are Faulkneresques. It’s inevitable.

8) SCIFIGHTER – In high school you faked a broken leg to read undisturbed during gym. You know the name, episode number, plot, and errors of every episode of Star Trek AND what the TV novelizations did wrong. You know the difference between Clifford Simak and Larry Niven, and you dismiss McCaffrey, Whyte, and Foster with a disdainful sniff. You are underemployed and underappreciated. For a life of poverty but being understood, marry a Goreifyer. If you want to eat and own a house someday, marry a Faulkneresque.

9) ROSEPETALIST You are deeper than people believe, but content to let it go. After all, life is for loving, not fighting. So you know more about King Henry VIII’s court than your average history professor; does it matter? Go by, mad world, so long as the chocolate supply holds out and the newest Harlequin is delivered to your door each week. You like bad boys, so are drawn to Goreifyers, but for true happiness, get yourself a nice Fauxfaulk and a house in the ‘burbs.

10) GOREIFYER – If it’s gross, you love it. Don’t try to hang with a Cormacite; you don’t understand each other as much as you think you do. Robert McCammon is your patron saint, although Steven King can sometimes deliver the goods. Marry your high school sweetheart Scifighter, or break from the pack and hook up with a Histbuffer. You’ll have more to talk about than you might suppose.

11) HISTBUFFER – You hate the term amateur historian, because you’ve dedicated your life to a well-rounded reading list of the latest equivalent to Simon Schama and Thomas Cahill. You know more about Thomas Jefferson than any person living–and are happy to prove it. That’s why you don’t get asked to parties much, but it gives you more reading time. Date across the signs; it will help you socialize.

12) YAER – You read young adult fiction almost exclusively. Suzanne Collins is your idol, and you write whenever you have spare time. Someday you are going to shove that Potter kid right off the shelf. Although you have many friends who are Cormacites, marry a Faulkneresque if you can; they’re good providers and you might not have to get a day job.